It was irrational, of course. Chloe had explained before that it was extremely difficult to work such magic on people who had magic of their own; they had natural defenses that eroded those sorts of charms and enchantments over time. On the other hand, Mr. Dove hadn’t seemed to be all that worried about anyone’s natural defenses, and he’d fooled them easily enough. She found herself exploring her memories of Aiden, her feelings for him, as they walked toward the stone plinths that were beginning to become barely visible in the cloudy, dark night. Did they all make sense? Was there any sign of tampering? If there was, she didn’t find it. She did find that her mistrust was beginning to grow thorns, though.
“Everything okay?” Avery asked quietly, and the two of them slowed a bit to let space grow between them and the other two wizards, who were muttering in conversation with one another.
“Did it not bother you how Gideon just casually messed with the guards minds?” She asked.
Avery blew out a slow breath, which was his way of signaling that his answer may not have been the one she wanted to hear. “I don’t think this is really a casual situation,” he said finally. “Maybe it was necessary. What if what we’re about to do is... I don’t know, dangerous? We want everyone to be out of harm’s way, right? Maybe it was the only way.”
Bailey only nodded. Avery was probably right. Still... Gideon had done it with a smile. Even if it there wasn’t another way, it shouldn’t have been so easy. She hugged her coat close to her, and they sped up to meet Gideon and Aiden at the edge of the henge.
In other circumstances, Bailey might have enjoyed it more. She’d only left the United States once before, a road trip to Canada with her parents years ago; British Columbia had been colder but otherwise not all that different than home. For that matter, Amesbury wasn’t all that different than Coven Grove. Stonehenge was something else, though.
She hadn’t realized just how large the stones would be. Well over twice the size of Aiden or Gideon, the two were dwarfed by the plinth they stood next to when they stopped at the edge of the ring. They were so large that in the near total darkness she couldn’t see the the stone on top of the two. It was clear why people came up with so many wild theories about how the place was built. If you took away cranes and complex tools, all you had left were ingenuity, aliens, or magic—which Bailey assumed was how it had actually been built. Though, until the stones themselves were in place, she imagined the ancient network of paths through Faerie weren’t used.
Someone muttered, maybe Aiden, and a bobbing tuft of light appeared in the air. She saw Aiden flick his wand a few times, and smaller tufts of light burst out of it and went traveling around the circle of standing stones. From some distance off, they’d have looked like will-o-wisps; faerie lights that would no doubt be talked about for weeks to come by anyone who happened to watch the place from a distance. Of course, at three AM that seemed unlikely.
“So,” Bailey said as the lights spread out, giving the place an eerie, soft luminescence, “any idea what specifically we’re looking for?”
Gideon pursed his lips, and drew a small, worn leather journal from his coat pocket. He licked a finger and flipped to a page that was marked. “The stones themselves are aligned to the midwinter sunrise and the midsummer sunset,” he muttered quietly. “So the fifth step of the sun would be...” he pointed at stones and began counting. “Yes, that should be it...”
He left them to walk toward one of the stones on the far side of the ring. Bailey sighed and followed, sharing her frustration with Aiden in a look. Aiden merely shrugged, and followed Gideon.
“Why does the fifth step of the sun matter?” Bailey asked curtly as they caught up to the older wizard.
Gideon glanced at her and frowned for a moment. “It’s believed that one of the line of Medea was buried here. Stonehenge, all of this, was a burial ground before it was this. It took a very long time to build the place, even with the assistance of magic. Before it was built, you see, magic was about as strong as it is now. I could very possibly muster enough power to levitate one of the stones, but not for very long. It would take dozens of us working in sync to actually move the stone any great distance and, well, it would still take a very long time. Presumable afterward—”
“This descendent,” Bailey interrupted, “she was buried under the stone we’re looking for?”
Gideon cleared his throat. “Properly speaking, no. The stone was placed on top of the descendant's, ah, gravesite.”
“You got this information from Professor Turner?” She asked.
He nodded. “Some of it, yes. I correlated what he found with the bits of lore that I myself collected. It should be... this one.”
They had stopped in front of one of the stones that didn’t have a capstone on it. The one that might once have supported it had fallen, likely thousands of years before. “Possibly between them.”
“Is there some sign we’re looking for?” Aiden asked. “Some trace of magic perhaps?”
“The place has been scoured for any lingering magic,” Gideon said ruefully. “If it were so obvious, it would have been discovered long ago. No, I don’t think it will be as obvious as all that...” His eyes flickered very briefly at Bailey, and she sighed as she looked around the immediate area, eager to find whatever was here and then go back home.
Whether what Gideon said was true or not, all three wizards produced wands and began muttering spells and waving them at patches of ground, at the stones themselves, and in the air above them. Bailey felt almost out of place among them. They had a number of diagnostic spells at their disposal, but witchcraft was more intuitive than that. Dweomers and identification were technical tools used by practitioners who approached magic as a science; the Coven relied more on feeling the warp and weft of magic.
So, she attempted to do that. Reaching for her magic was difficult, as if it had always been at eye level but was now on a shelf so far above her that she had to stand on her toes and grasp for it with her fingertips. She forgot to breathe as she grabbed what she could and dragged it toward her, only exhaling a long, slow gust of spent air as it trickled into her awareness. With it, she could begin to feel the ambient, latent magic in the land around them, and when she did she gasped.
Whatever the wizards were doing to look for magic, they must have been doing it wrong. The whole area was practically saturated with it. Once she honed her senses, adjusting her attention for the subtle pressures of ancient magic in the soil and stones, it was like some force pressing gently up against the soles of her feet. She even reached for it to see if she could supplement her own magic with it, but it was as insubstantial as air and refused to come at her call.
There was... something. A kind of itch that was outside her body, in the corner of her eye, and just beyond the range of her senses no matter how she moved. She followed it though, as it changed in intensity. It consumed her focus so much, in fact, that she nearly ran headlong into one of the great stones, only stopping an inch or so from it as the monolith startled her out of her trance.
It was several stones away from where Gideon had pointed them, but she knew as she placed her hand on it that this was the one. It had to be. It felt... like nothing she could describe. Native, somehow; like an old friend, or a distant but beloved relative—the kind you wrote letters to but had never really met before face to face. There was a familiarity to the subtle hum of power, as if it were in harmony with the note playing inside her own magic.
“Bailey?” Aiden called out.
She glanced back, losing touch with both her magic and the magic of the place as she did.
“It’s closer this way,” Gideon said confidently. “We don’t have time for sightseeing, lass.”
“It’s not,” Bailey said, the older wizard’s cavalier surety grating her nerves, “this is the one.”
Gideon looked back to his journal, but Aiden and Avery both approached her. Each of them were waving wands and peering through the circle made of their thumbs and forefi
ngers, frowning by the time Gideon trotted toward them.
“I don’t see anything, Bails,” Avery said apologetically.
“Nor do I,” Aiden admitted.
Bailey shook her head at both of them. “Whatever you’re looking for, I don’t think it’s what we’re supposed to find. I felt plenty of magic here. Especially from this stone. Something familiar.”
“Can you describe it better than that?” Gideon asked from behind her. “Specifics? Planar locale, resonant tone, dimensional angle—”
She fought to keep from rolling her eyes. “I can just feel it,” she said. “That’s as specific as I know how to get.”
“She’s a witch, Gideon,” Aiden said gently.
“Yes,” Gideon sighed, “well that’s the problem with witchcraft, isn’t it? Entirely too vague. No offense, dear.”
“It’s not vague to me,” Bailey asserted, and put her hand to the stone again. “I just don’t quite have the right words... what else do your notes say? Anything else that’s useful?”
She schooled her face to keep from appearing as smug as she felt when Gideon flipped through several pages without answer. Eventually, though, he tapped something.
“Here... the path is, according to most of the lore, walked in a circle from... well from start to finish. It begins where it ends and ends where it... begins.” He looked up and around the area. “Possibly a reference to some sort of geomantic sigil. You must have walked it by accident and tuned into the proper phase. Show me the path you took.”
She tried, but failed; and in any case she didn’t think that was right. After the experiment yielded no results, she shook her head and returned to the stone. “You’re talking about this place as if wizards built it,” she said. “What if they didn’t?”
Avery and Aiden both gave her curious looks, but Gideon smiled patiently at her. “When it comes to endeavors like the henge, you see, historically wizards have been... how to put it... the heavy lifters. It makes more sense for us to have created Stonehenge.”
“Maybe back then,” Bailey said, standing her ground, “there wasn’t such a division. Witchcraft is older, closer to how magic was done originally.”
“She does have a point,” Aiden chimed in. “Perhaps the magic here is in resonance with principles closer to the older ways; wizardry didn’t really hit the age of enlightenment until the late twelfth century, after all.”
Gideon did mull this over for a moment, and then looked the standing stone up and down as if seeking some sign that this was so. When he didn’t find whatever he was looking for, he settled his eyes back on Bailey, and slipped the journal into his coat. “So be it. What do you think comes next?”
Bailey bit her lip, and closed her eyes, seeking something—guidance? A clue? A whispered voice of one of her ancient ancestors? None of those things presented themselves, so she instead turned her thoughts toward what she knew, or thought she knew, of the Throne itself. One thing did come to her in a quiet moment of inspiration. “The Throne of Medea,” she said, “you said before that it was blood magic?”
“Not in the literal sense,” Gideon said. “It was tied to Medea’s bloodline, but didn’t involve anything as base as ritual sacrifice, if that’s what you’re asking?”
It wasn’t, at least not precisely, but it did give Bailey an idea that she didn’t particularly relish. “Does anyone have a... pin, or a knife or something like that?”
“Not literal blood magic,” Gideon repeated, “and even if it were, chances are you would have to be...” He quieted when Bailey glanced at him, nervous.
It took some digging, but Aiden had a safety pin in his wallet. It was old, and part of it was rusted; still, it was the best they could do. He produced a tiny spark of fire to make sure it was at least as sanitary as they could make it.
Bailey took it from him and had to work up the nerve for nearly a minute before she jabbed the sharp end into the meat of her thumb, wincing and wheezing out a pained breath as she did. The small wound almost immediately began to throb entirely out of proportion to the injury itself, but she ignored that as she massaged her hand to work up a sizable drop of blood that looked black in the odd caste of Aiden’s wizard light.
Step two, if there was even a step one, was probably where precisely to put the stuff. Did she simply drip it onto the ground, based on the theory that one of her ancestors was buried here? Did she put it on the altar at the center of the circle? That was the traditional place, as far as the history she’d read on Stonehenge. She didn’t want to have to try too many times; but she would if she had to.
She started with where she was, licking her suddenly dry lips before she knelt, and drew in her magic again until she could feel that stone humming with power.
As she moved her hand carefully toward it, something changed. There was an almost magnetic pull, guiding her hand down to the base of the stone, as if some invisible hand were drawing her toward a particular spot. She had to sweep aside tall grass to get to it, and even then she had to dig at the ground where the stone had likely sunk further into the earth over the centuries. When she did reach it, and pressed her hand to the stone, all three wizards made sounds of surprise and took a step back.
Bailey looked up, and saw why.
Patterns of light had begun to emerge from the stone, violet, and blue, and red and some other color Bailey hadn’t seen before. The patterns looked like the paintings on the walls of the seven caves. She recognized some of them immediately, and her pulse sped up with excitement.
From behind them came a soft, feminine voice, which none the less made all four heads whip around in alarm to see an apparition standing several yards away, a woman in thin robes, wearing decorations of leather, and stone, and bone, and bangles that made no sounds as she shifted around her ankles and wrists. “Welcome,” she said, “daughter of Itaja. Blood to blood, spirit to spirit, I am called, and I have come.”
Bailey stood slowly, and the woman’s eyes followed her. Not merely a sending of some kind, then. She asked in a shaky voice, “Who... who are you?”
The woman smiled. “I am brief. I am timeless. I am your forebear, and your future. I am the sorceress Medea. You seek my Throne. I have come to show you the path, and offer you the chance to turn away from it.”
“Why would I turn away?” Bailey breathed, her mind suddenly howling with a million other questions.
“Because, dear daughter,” Medea said, patient but almost sad, “to step foot on the path is to die.”
Chapter 7
“Wait,” Aiden said, stepping forward. “This will kill her? What sort of plan is that? I would have thought you would want the Throne to be recreated; it was named after you, after all.”
The spirit, or whatever it was, of Medea didn’t seem to notice Aiden speaking, or she didn’t care. She kept her placid gaze on Bailey. “What say you, daughter?”
Bailey wanted to look to her friends, and even Gideon, for some kind of guidance, but she found that Medea’s cool, depthless eyes held hers gently, and she couldn’t look away. “I... don’t want to die,” she said.
“All things do,” Medea responded.
“I mean that I don’t want to die from this,” Bailey said.
“In each moment, death comes upon us,” Medea told her. “The future dies to the present, the present to the past. The past to a new future as old ways are forgotten and fade forever from memory.”
There was almost certainly some kind of ancient wisdom there, but in the moment Bailey didn’t have the presence of mind to ponder it. She wasn’t sure how long this conversation was going to last. So instead, she trusted her gut. Surely, the death that Medea meant was something symbolic—witch spells and lore were rife with symbolic usage of terms like ‘life’ and ‘death’ and the planets and stars and even plants. Things rarely meant what they were. Just to be sure, she asked as directly as she could for an answer. “Do you mean literal death?”
“I mean,” Medea said softly, her voice coming, Bailey r
ealized, not precisely from her mouth, but from almost all around them, “death.”
“Bailey,” Aiden breathed.
She tried to look at him, but she couldn’t. Nor could she even talk to him. She was enthralled, for the moment, and the only actions she seemed to be able to take were those related to the exchange. But she knew what he was likely thinking. His vision. He’d seen death. Actual death, though of who he wasn’t certain; it was a detail he was never able to draw out clearly from his dreams.
There was a sense, however, that this conversation would only happen once. Bailey couldn’t have said how she knew it, but she did. There wasn’t going to be a chance to come back later after she did some more research, weighed the pros and cons, and made an informed decision. If she didn’t do this now, the chance would be lost. Trembling, she nodded once. “I want to walk the path. I want to find the Throne.”
Medea’s smile was motherly; that was the only thing Bailey could think about the hopeful, almost proud expression on her face as the spirit drifted forward. “Brave daughter,” the apparition said, “we will not speak again. I go to my rest. Take heed, child of the art; this you must not forget in your journey: the Throne does not make a queen; it is the Queen that makes a throne. Take with you Itaja’s letters.” She touched Bailey on the forehead, between her brows. It was as insubstantial as a slight summer breeze, and Bailey wasn’t sure what she received, if she received anything, but she knew that something had passed between them. “The path is begun.”
And then, she was gone.
Bailey sucked in a breath, and stumbled back as if some force had been holding her up. It seemed as though Medea had been composed of pure, blinding light compared to the dim illumination of the the will-o-wisps but she left behind no light blindness like she should have. Hands caught Bailey around the shoulders and at her back as she stumbled, and she was steadied; she looked up thankfully to Aiden and Avery both; they were pale in the light, but she didn’t think it was entirely a matter of lighting alone. Their eyes were wide with concern.
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